THE LOOMING FAMINE IN ETHIOPIA - GPO · PDF fileTHE LOOMING FAMINE IN ETHIOPIA HEARING BEFORE THE ... Reagan said a hungry child knows no politics. ... that we have the right kind

U.S. GOVERNMENT PRINTING OFFICE

WASHINGTON : 67–167 CC 2000

THE LOOMING FAMINE IN ETHIOPIA

HEARINGBEFORE THE

COMMITTEE ON

INTERNATIONAL RELATIONS

HOUSE OF REPRESENTATIVES

ONE HUNDRED SIXTH CONGRESS

SECOND SESSION

MAY 18, 2000

Serial No. 106–148

Printed for the use of the Committee on International Relations

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Available via the World Wide Web: http://www.house.gov/international—relations

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COMMITTEE ON INTERNATIONAL RELATIONS

BENJAMIN A. GILMAN, New York, ChairmanWILLIAM F. GOODLING, PennsylvaniaJAMES A. LEACH, IowaHENRY J. HYDE, IllinoisDOUG BEREUTER, NebraskaCHRISTOPHER H. SMITH, New JerseyDAN BURTON, IndianaELTON GALLEGLY, CaliforniaILEANA ROS-LEHTINEN, FloridaCASS BALLENGER, North CarolinaDANA ROHRABACHER, CaliforniaDONALD A. MANZULLO, IllinoisEDWARD R. ROYCE, CaliforniaPETER T. KING, New YorkSTEVE CHABOT, OhioMARSHALL ‘‘MARK’’ SANFORD, South

CarolinaMATT SALMON, ArizonaAMO HOUGHTON, New YorkTOM CAMPBELL, CaliforniaJOHN M. MCHUGH, New YorkKEVIN BRADY, TexasRICHARD BURR, North CarolinaPAUL E. GILLMOR, OhioGEORGE RADANOVICH, CaliforniaJOHN COOKSEY, LouisianaTHOMAS G. TANCREDO, Colorado

SAM GEJDENSON, ConnecticutTOM LANTOS, CaliforniaHOWARD L. BERMAN, CaliforniaGARY L. ACKERMAN, New YorkENI F.H. FALEOMAVAEGA, American

SamoaMATTHEW G. MARTINEZ, CaliforniaDONALD M. PAYNE, New JerseyROBERT MENENDEZ, New JerseySHERROD BROWN, OhioCYNTHIA A. MCKINNEY, GeorgiaALCEE L. HASTINGS, FloridaPAT DANNER, MissouriEARL F. HILLIARD, AlabamaBRAD SHERMAN, CaliforniaROBERT WEXLER, FloridaSTEVEN R. ROTHMAN, New JerseyJIM DAVIS, FloridaEARL POMEROY, North DakotaWILLIAM D. DELAHUNT, MassachusettsGREGORY W. MEEKS, New YorkBARBARA LEE, CaliforniaJOSEPH CROWLEY, New YorkJOSEPH M. HOEFFEL, Pennsylvania

RICHARD J. GARON, Chief of StaffKATHLEEN BERTELSEN MOAZED, Democratic Chief of Staff

THOMAS CALLAHAN, Professional Staff Member and CounselNICOLLE A. SESTRIC, Staff Associate


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C O N T E N T S

WITNESSES

Page

Catherine Bertini, Special Envoy of the United States Secretary-General onthe Drought in the Horn of Africa and Executive Director of the WorldFood Programme .................................................................................................. 2

The Honorable Hugh Q. Parmer, Assistant Administrator, Bureau for Hu-manitarian Response, U.S. Agency for International Development ................ 16

J. Stephen Morrison, Director, Africa Program, Center for Strategic and Inter-national Studies, Washington, DC ...................................................................... 26

Gary Shaye, Vice President for International Programs, Save The Children .... 30

APPENDIX

Members’ Prepared Statements:

The Honorable Benjamin A. Gilman, a Representative in Congress from theState of New York and Chairman, Committee on International Relations .... 34

The Honorable Tom Campbell, a Representative in Congress from the Stateof California .......................................................................................................... 36

Witnesses’ Prepared Statements:

Catherine Bertini ..................................................................................................... 37Hugh Q. Parmer ...................................................................................................... 44J. Stephen Morrison ................................................................................................ 54Gary Shaye ............................................................................................................... 59

Additional Information:

Letter from Assistant Administrator Parmer in response to a question con-cerning French assistance to the Djibouti port ................................................. 62

Letter from Assistant Administrator Parmer in response to a question con-cerning Italy’s contributions to relief efforts in 2000 ........................................ 63



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THE LOOMING FAMINE IN ETHIOPIA

THURSDAY, MAY 18, 2000

HOUSE OF REPRESENTATIVES,COMMITTEE ON INTERNATIONAL RELATIONS,

Washington, DC.The Committee met, pursuant to notice, at 10 a.m., in room 2172

Rayburn House Office Building, Hon. Benjamin A. Gilman (Chair-man of the Committee) presiding.

Chairman GILMAN. The Committee will come to order, if Mem-bers will take their seats, and please close the doors.

This morning we are conducting a hearing on the conflict andfamine in Ethiopia.

Ms. Bertini, I would normally say it is very kind of you to bewith us today, but I suppose that that would not be quite accurate,since you are in London and we are communicating with you byteleconference. Nonetheless, I am so pleased that this Committeenow has the technology to be able to take advantage of your exper-tise from afar, and you usually are in far distant places throughoutthe world.

We appreciate your taking the time out of your busy schedule tospeak with us about the starvation in Ethiopia and the effects ofrenewed fighting, and our nation’s ability to address it.

The House will begin voting on a series of measures in a veryfew minutes. At that time, we may have to interrupt our hearing.I would like, therefore, to go immediately to your testimony, andI will postpone my opening statement until after we return fromthose votes; and I would ask my colleagues to do the same.

At this point, I would like to ask our Ranking Minority Member,Mr. Gejdenson, the gentleman from Connecticut, for any openingremarks.

Mr. GEJDENSON. Thank you, Mr. Chairman. This is an importantarea. We have 16 million people in the Horn of Africa who riskstarvation. There is a brutal and senseless war going on. It wouldbe easy to throw our hands up and say there is nothing we can do,and they brought it on themselves, but obviously, that would justleave a lot of innocent people to suffer and die.

There are lots of international organizations like Save the Chil-dren in my own State and many others who are trying to save peo-ple. The United States ought to use all of its resources to stop thewar and end the starvation.

I am looking forward to hearing from Ms. Bertini, whom I hadthe privilege of being with earlier in the week.

Chairman GILMAN. Thank you, Mr. Gejdenson.


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Catherine Bertini has directed the World Food Program since1992. She has done extremely well. In 1999, 88 million peoplearound the world received World Food Program food aid. When theSecretary-General learned of the threat of famine in the Horn ofAfrica, he appointed Ms. Bertini as his special representative tothat region. With her typical enthusiasm, Catherine Bertini imme-diately embarked on a mission to the Horn, followed by a thought-ful and comprehensive report. As a representative from our greatState of New York, I take special pride in mentioning that Ms.Bertini is a graduate of the State University of New York at Al-bany.

We welcome you, Catherine Bertini. We look forward to your tes-timony. Your written statement will be entered into the record infull. Please feel free to summarize.

Ms. Bertini.

STATEMENT OF CATHERINE BERTINI (VIA VIDEO-CON-FERENCE), EXECUTIVE DIRECTOR, WORLD FOOD PRO-GRAMME, AND SPECIAL ENVOY OF THE U.N. SECRETARY-GENERAL ON THE DROUGHT IN THE HORN OF AFRICA

Ms. BERTINI. Thank you very much, Mr. Chairman, and I ampleased to be here with you too, even though ‘‘here’’ means London;and I appreciate the invitation. But I would be with you and Mem-bers of the Committee anywhere as we work together on criticalissues that are a matter of life and death.

I also want to thank the staff of the embassy here in London,very efficient staff, for working with your very efficient staff whohave made this possible.

You remember during the mid-1980’s, when President RonaldReagan said a hungry child knows no politics. Once again, hischarge and that commitment that he made on behalf of the Amer-ican people is something that we have to bring to fore, because itis true that while some of the countries in the region of the Hornof Africa are involved in a brutal war, we have to remember thehungry children. Once again, credit must be given to the UnitedStates of America who has taken an early lead in addressing theseproblems of the crisis in the Horn of Africa.

I will summarize my statement and ask you to put the rest inthe record.

Chairman GILMAN. Without objection, your full statement will bemade a part of the record.

Ms. BERTINI. Thank you.As the Secretary-General’s Special Envoy to the Horn of Africa,

I have found that, first of all, the crisis is not yet a famine, butit easily could be; and it could be unless we put every effort pos-sible into preventive measures in order to ensure that a faminedoes not occur. There have been 3 years of consecutive poor rainfallwhich has made it very hard for people and for animals. Their foodis gone and their water is scarce. The health conditions are deterio-rating, and the hardest hit people are those who make their livingwith their animals, pastoralists who wander in search of food andwater for themselves and for their animals. We are always particu-larly concerned about women and children, because they are the


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most vulnerable. We estimate that in the whole region there are16 million people who are at risk.

The Secretary-General’s timing in naming a special envoy wascritical, I think, in order to put the United Nations in a positionto be proactive, to be raising the issues and to be encouraging addi-tional contributions and more coordinated aid efforts in the region.

You will note from the map of the region entitled Greater Hornof Africa, Drought-Affected Areas, that there are huge areas af-fected by this lack of rain, and that they cross borders betweenKenya, Ethiopia, and Somalia in particular. There are many peoplewho cross borders, people who are, again, moving with their ani-mals to find food and water, and they do not pay attention towhere the borders are, they are just looking for relief. That meansthat we have to be very careful within the humanitarian commu-nity that we are providing complementary assistance. We don’twant to place, for instance, a huge feeding center near the borderin one country and then have that mean that hundreds and thou-sands of people are moving across the border to another area aswell. So we have to have complementary programming.

We also have to be very careful on the security side, because aspeople move, so do problems. So we have to be sure we have com-munications systems set up; and we are now in the process of doingthat, so that we can have aid workers communicate with eachother on a regular basis throughout the region.

We have found that the biggest unmet needs are for clean waterand for basic medicines. We have found that support for the live-stock sector is almost nonexistent, and many of the people who areaffected count on their livestock for their livelihood; and we havefound that although food aid has been coming in, we need to ensurethat we have the right kind of quantity and quality.

For instance, people who had been counting on their animals butno longer have animals, were used to some basic protein in theirdiet. They need to still get some of that. We also need to be surethat children have the right kind of food when they are very vul-nerable.

I proposed to the Secretary-General, and he accepted that theUnited Nations do a new assessment and by the end of May an-nounce an additional appeal. There are appeals already on thebooks, appeals already to donor countries asking for assistance.They were prepared with estimates based on assumptions made inNovember and December of last year, and those assessments as-sumed that there would be rain by now. But the rain has been spo-radic; it is not enough. So this new appeal will build on the currentrequests and ask for additional assistance, especially in the areasof water needs and health needs.

We are hoping that UNICEF will play a lead role, as well asWHO providing medical expertise and FAO in its efforts to helpwith livestock and seeds.

The OCHA, the United Nation’s humanitarian coordinators orga-nization, is playing a very active role. They provided excellent sup-port for my mission, and now, they have a staff member appointedby the Secretary-General to report to him through OCHA in orderto manage the coordination of humanitarian affairs for the Horn of


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Africa. He is Manuel Aranda daSilva, and he is based in AddisAbaba, already at work.

One more area that needs to be highlighted is the area of trans-portation. The ports that we will be using need additional up-grades. The World Food Program has been working on that now.Also, the roads in and out of those ports need to be improved, andwe are asking donors for assistance in helping to do that. Thetransport within the individual country, especially Ethiopia, needsextra expertise, and we have been providing that to the govern-ment, but it also needs coordination among all the donors—theNGO’s and the United Nations—so that we can maximize the useof a limited amount of trucks and reduced port capacity.

Then, finally, Mr. Chairman, I want to say, how can the UnitedStates help and what else can the United States do? I did have theopportunity to talk with you a bit about this before and with Mr.Gejdenson and with others. Let me just quickly summarize.

First of all, USAID has been very proactive, acting early andquickly in the Horn. They have given very generous contributionsof food, and I would hope that when the new appeal comes outlater, they would continue to give generous contributions, assumingthat the needs have increased after the assessment is finished. Re-lated to that, however, I would hope that the United States wouldtake a special look at the needs, the non-food needs like medicines,water supply, cans to carry water, and seeds and tools, and live-stock expertise and support. I would hope that the United Stateswould make contributions also to the agencies to be able to workin these very crucial areas.

We have found that even in the regions where the most severehunger existed, the people who died had died not of malnutritionprimarily, but of diarrhea, of measles, of upper respiratory dis-eases, things that could have been—people who could have beensaved with the right kind of medicine.

Another area I think where the United States can be helpful isin upgrading the roads, particularly the ones in and out of theports in Djibouti and Berbera. Because even once the port improve-ments are complete, we still need decent roads; otherwise, that willslow down the movement of food and other important items in andout of Ethiopia in particular. Then also the United States and itsother partners, donor partners and all of the NGO’s and the UnitedNations must work very, very closely on coordination, perhapsmore closely than we have in any other place, because, again, ofa limited port capacity. It is very important for us to coordinatewhen the ships are coming into port, from whom the trucks arebeing leased, when the trucks are available; all of these things arecritically important.

Finally, the United States might consider sending some expertsfor a few months to the regional coordination unit to be able to pro-vide assistance on issues like livestock development, public health,and possibly security, because security for United Nations staff andhumanitarian staff in the region is critically important as well.

Most importantly, of course, in addition to this critical humani-tarian need, the United States could use its political and diplomaticskills in a major way in its efforts to bring peace to the people inthe region.


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The American people have reached out to poor people and peoplewho need food and medicine throughout the world in many gen-erous ways before. The American people have saved millions oflives. With your leadership, Mr. Chairman, Mr. Gejdenson, Mem-bers of the Committee, the active work of the Administration andthe brave work of NGO’s and U.N. staff around the world, I knowwe can do so again in the Horn of Africa.

Thank you.[The prepared statement of Ms. Bertini appears in the appendix.]Chairman GILMAN. Thank you, Catherine Bertini, for your excel-

lent report. I know you have a time constraint, and we will try tobe brief.

You mentioned a number of things that we should be doing—gen-erous contributions and the upgrading of the ports and coordina-tion of relief activities and provision of livestock, et cetera.

What do you feel is the most critical that we should do imme-diately while we are working on this? What is the top priority?

Ms. BERTINI. From a humanitarian perspective, two things Iwould say, Mr. Chairman. First, is money to upgrade the roads sothat the goods can move through; and second, is additional supportfor medical and water-related non-food items.

Chairman GILMAN. In upgrading the roads, are they capable offulfilling that responsibility if we help them financially?

Ms. BERTINI. The way it would be done, Mr. Chairman, is thatthe World Food Program would contract people to do the work andwould monitor and follow the work. We would bring in some of ourown experts to supervise this and hire local people to manage it.So we have had good success in doing this in areas around theworld before, so I can assure you that we would do it quickly andwell enough for the food trucks to move through.

Chairman GILMAN. Will the ports in Djibouti and Berbera beadequate to handle the transport requirements?

Ms. BERTINI. That is a good question. First, let me say that weanticipate that 170,000 tons of food and other items need to movethrough either of those ports, particularly into Ethiopia. That is as-suming the current needs, but that is for all of the humanitarianaid. The needs might go up.

Djibouti can probably provide about 140,000 or 145,000 tons.Berbera can probably provide about 20,000 or 25,000 tons. So thatmeans that it can be handled, but it is very, very tight, and thatonly assuming that everything goes extremely well.

The Djiboutian port officials believe that the Djibouti port couldhandle actually as much as 200,000 tons, but that would requireextremely smooth coordination. If this does not work, then we willhave to go back to the officials in Ethiopia and Eritrea and discussthe use of the Assab port.

Chairman GILMAN. Ms. Bertini, are you aware of any of the foodor humanitarian supplies being diverted to the war effort?

Ms. BERTINI. We, of course, investigate every time we hear any-thing, and just in the last couple of days, we have had a couple ofallegations that we are looking into. For instance, we learned thatthe government sent about 1,132 metric tons of food to displacedpeople, and because we learned this after the fact, we were not ableto monitor this food, and we must be able to review it.


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We also understand that some food has been going to anotherarea where it is intended to be used to feed displaced people, butthis is food that had been requested for drought victims. So itmeans that we have to upgrade our ability to monitor the food fromthe warehouse to ensure that it is going to the right people.

Chairman GILMAN. One last question. Six bridges in between theport of Berbera and a famine area are reported to be out. Can weput Bailey bridges in and leave them there? Would that not serveeconomic development interests in Somaliland, as well as meet ourlogistic requirements?

Ms. BERTINI. Absolutely. Part of the improvements of the portand the road and bridges and access ways out of Berbera wouldcertainly be longer standing to help support the economic develop-ment of this region in that peaceful part of Somalia.

Chairman GILMAN. Thank you very much, Ms. Bertini.Mr. Gejdenson.Mr. GEJDENSON. Thank you. Let me first say, the ability to pre-

dict the weather is much better today, so we knew that there weregoing to be rainfall shortages. It is easier to mobilize this Com-mittee to hold a hearing today, so I am not just blaming others, be-cause there is a crisis now, it is immediate. We have so manyplaces in the world to pay attention to; and if you tried to get ourattention 3 years ago or 2 years ago, it probably would have beenmore difficult.

But are there things that we should have been doing 3 years ago,2 years ago, 1 year ago that would have made this situation moremanageable, and what would they be?

Ms. BERTINI. Two things I think, Mr. Gejdenson.First of all, generally the United Nations has a much better proc-

ess for being able to predict drought areas. I should say, beyond theUnited Nations, coordinating with U.S. facilities, as well as otherinternational facilities. So this particular drought was predicted tobe less severe than it was. There were a lot of efforts made lastyear on the part of the governments in the region, as well as theagencies supported by donors such as the United States, to bringin a lot of food and to work on contingency planning. The problemis, even the worst-case scenario presumed that there would be alonger amount of rainfall by now, and that did not occur.

Over the long term, in answer to your question, we need to berethinking how we deal with droughts in this part of Africa, or inany areas where droughts come often. Because if they do, I thinkwhat we have to do is help provide support and assistance to thegovernments to be able to react in a different way.

I heard an interesting review of this by Dr. Richard Leakey, whois now the head of the Civil Service in Kenya, when I visited himon this mission. He said, we in this part of Africa have to startthinking about droughts as African winters and we have to changeour mind-sets. He said, you people in the north where the snowcomes, you know you are not going to grow food then, you knowyou have problems with passable roads, so you make preparationsfor that. Somehow, we have to rethink how we position food, howwe plan for food for the animals over the long term.

One thing that might help the process, as Secretary-General KofiAnnan has not only asked me to go to work on this issue of the


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current drought, but he has also asked Mr. Diouf of FAO would hework on some longer-term solutions. As yet, we don’t have those todiscuss.

Mr. GEJDENSON. Let me just ask, I think it is clear that we haveto do whatever we can to help the people who are suffering, nomatter how insane the policies of the government in a country maybe. But how do you find—how do you make sure that your involve-ment, our involvement, doesn’t increase the ability of the govern-ment to sustain the war? In a sense, they now can ignore severalhundred thousand people or more who need assistance because theinternational community is rushing in, and so they can put all oftheir resources and effort into fighting?

Ms. BERTINI. I think the drought, first of all, is bigger than thegovernment’s capacity to be able to handle it, even if there werenot a war, and that would be true for both the governments thatare involved in war. Of course, we are also providing assistance inKenya and Somalia and Uganda, Tanzania and elsewhere, and thewar is not an issue in most of those places. So I think the assist-ance is necessary, in any event.

Does it provide a bit of relief to the government that we aresending this food, additional food because of the drought? Perhaps.But the people who are drought-affected I believe need massiveamounts of food from us no matter what.

Do we have an alternative? I don’t think so. I think we have tobe sending the food and making sure that it is going to thedrought-affected people. That is our big challenge. But we have tosend the food, because the alternative is that innocent people willsuffer even more.

Mr. GEJDENSON. Thank you.Chairman GILMAN. Thank you, Mr. Gejdenson.Mr. Royce, the Distinguished Chairman of our Subcommittee on

Africa.Mr. ROYCE. Thank you, Mr. Chairman. I want to thank you for

calling this hearing on famine in the Horn, and on America’s effortto help. I do hope we have the opportunity to look at one of theroot causes of this famine, which is the wasteful war between Ethi-opia and Eritrea.

Today, we are looking at a scenario in which both nations haveboth spent to date, $1 billion. Every day that goes by, a half-millionis spent by Ethiopia alone on paying their troops. When we talkabout the lack of vehicles for transport, the infrastructure problemsin the famine context, I think it is important for us to realize thatthose vehicles have been commandeered. They are at the front.There is a reason why those vehicles are not there to transport hu-manitarian assistance.

This is the largest war in the world at the moment, and millionsare starving, and I don’t think we should pull any punches. Thisis gruesome. It is a gross devaluing of human life by both sides.The international community must speak out against this sadchapter in Africa’s history, including imposing an arms embargo;and I commend the administration for pushing that at the UnitedNations.

Often, the war is described as senseless. The leaders of these twocountries were friends, so it goes. They fought side-by-side against


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the previous regime. So people ask, how could these two countries,which showed so much promise, take up arms against one another,and lead tens of thousands of their young men and women to theirdeaths and help generate the crisis with a famine?

This is not senseless. The war has deep fundamentals. The coun-tries are at odds over economic and political issues. The war hascultural roots, and as for the territorial dispute, in my estimation,it is a convenient ruse for both nations wishing to deflect attentionfrom the deeper issues of this war.

One of the deepest issues driving this carnage is that both gov-ernments see domestic advantage in making war; that is the sadreality. Until we get beyond arguing over old maps and treaties,tens of thousands of young men and women will continue to die,and the world will hear about the perverse celebrations from bothcapitals over how many enemy lives they have snuffed out. No, thiswar has an all-too-real logic.

Finally, let me share a New York Times report of this Tuesdayfrom the trenches:

Ethiopian soldiers said they had found something in the trenches emphaticallynot dead: a 1-month-old baby. Many women are in the Eritrean army and the babymay have indicated just how this war has become a part of normal life in Ethiopiaand Eritrea over the last 2 years. ‘‘I got the feeling that he lived there,’’ said anEthiopian soldier as he watched the baby being carried from the trench.

Ms. BERTINI. Mr. Royce, I think, first of all, the humanitarianwork is affected by our inability to use the ports in Eritrea, so wehave to use the Djibouti and Berbera ports, and it would be easierif we could use the ports in Eritrea.

Second, the people on the border are displaced; there are manypeople who lived on the border in either country who are now dis-placed because of the war, and while that is not necessarily adrought-affected area, it just does put many more people at risk be-cause of what is happening in the war, and they are cut off fromall their normal facilities—food, medicine, everything else. So itmakes for a lot more people who need assistance, though notdrought-related.

On the drought-related side, in addition to the port, there aresome problems in terms of the distribution. There is a limitedtrucking capacity, and there is interest on the part of the govern-ment to manage the trucking facilities. Some of this was done be-fore the war, but it is much more controlled now, let’s say. I cannotsay whether that is a result of the war or not, but I can say thatwe are working with the government to try to allow experts fromthe United Nations, particularly the World Food Program, to beable to help manage the distribution in certain parts, for instance,of Ethiopia where we feel that we could do it relatively efficiently,compared to the current operation of distribution.

So I think those are some of the areas where we have seen ef-fects so far.

Mr. ROYCE. What are the people that you are helping sayingabout the war? What is their observation?

Ms. BERTINI. When I visited with people in the countries, wedidn’t talk about the war; we talked about the people’s lives andhow they were struggling to keep their lives and their families to-gether. So I think the war was very far away from some of them.


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Of course, in some communities, the husbands and fathersweren’t there; they were perhaps at the war, but when we askedwhere they were, that is not what we were told.

Chairman GILMAN. The gentleman’s time has expired.Ms. McKinney.Ms. MCKINNEY. Thank you, Mr. Chairman.I have a statement that I would like to submit for the record.Chairman GILMAN. Without objection, your full statement will be

made a part of the record.Ms. MCKINNEY. Thank you.Ms. Bertini, first of all, I want to express my agreement with the

words that have been said before me.But, Ms. Bertini, in your testimony, your written testimony, you

make the observation that the poorest people really don’t knowanything about the politics that are driving this; they are merelythe victims.

I am looking at a map of the affected places, and I believe Godeis there. I hope you have the same map. I am looking at Djiboutiand Berbera, and it appears to me that by the use of those twoports, you have access to more of the people who are hardest hit.

Could you talk to me about the use of those ports and the advan-tages? Because you have mentioned the use of the port of Assab,but it is farther away from the areas that are hardest hit. Talk tome.

Ms. BERTINI. The Djibouti and Berbera ports are closer to thepeople in the southeastern part of Ethiopia, and they would beused—particularly the Djibouti port—would in any event, but theport in Assab is larger and the roads coming in from the port ofAssab are better than they are from Djibouti, which is why weneed to have money to upgrade the road, because with the heavytrucks running on the road, upgrading would certainly help dra-matically.

The same with Berbera. The roads are very bad coming in, butas the Chairman pointed out, if we did upgrade them, including thebridges as well as the roads, we would also have long term eco-nomic development of that region, that part of the world.

I think it is important to point out, though, if you look on thatmap, that the most populated region the drought is affecting is ac-tually north of Addis Ababa; and that is where the Assab portcould have been useful.

But I don’t want to demean the Djibouti and Berbera ports. Theyare good ports and we need to use them; we just need to makesome upgrades to make them work better.

Let me say also that it is not like we could go in tomorrow anduse the Assab port anyway. There would need to be a lot ofchanges made. Many of the workers who used to work in the Assabport were Ethiopian, for instance, so there would need to be newworkers recruited and trained. We would have to bring in expa-triate drivers and they would have to have some place to stay, bothin the port and over the border. There are a lot of issues that havenot been resolved anyway.

Ms. MCKINNEY. What do you know about the use of land minesalong that road leading to the Assab port?


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Ms. BERTINI. I asked the Eritreans that question, actually, andthey said that the road wasn’t mined, but it is an issue that wewould have to look very carefully at, not only the roads, but thesides of the roads. Because if a truck needs repair, it goes off tothe side of the road; or is trying to avoid a goat in the middle ofthe road, it goes off. One would have to have pretty sure knowledgethat it wasn’t mined.

So I don’t know; I haven’t asked, and it is something that needsto be checked. Also, in the harbor.

Ms. MCKINNEY. Thank you, Mr. Chairman.Chairman GILMAN. Thank you, Ms. McKinney.Mr. Chabot.Mr. CHABOT. Thank you, Mr. Chairman. I will be relatively brief,

and if my questions have already been asked and answered, Iapologize, but I had another Committee that I had to be at.

So my main question is this: I just met with the Ambassadorfrom Ethiopia in my office the other day and we have met with theEritrean ambassador numerous times; and this war, all wars,many wars are pointless, and this one seems to be particularlypointless and a waste of human life and resources of countrieswhich ought to be putting these goods to other uses.

But could you elaborate somewhat on the connection between thewar and how this is going to affect the ability of the countries tosome extent deal with the famine themselves and what, if any-thing, the United States should be doing to resolve that?

Ms. BERTINI. The most important thing the United States shouldbe doing is, at the highest levels possible, trying to find peace forthe region and ensure an end to the war. From a humanitarianperspective, let me say that the drought is larger than the war interms of the country’s ability to manage the assistance needed be-cause of the drought. So we must be there, whether there is a waror not.

However, there are some issues in terms of the transport capac-ity and the management of the trucks, the port availabilities, thatare affected by the war.

Mr. CHABOT. Thank you.Chairman GILMAN. Thank you, Mr. Chabot.Mr. Ackerman.Mr. ACKERMAN. Thank you very much. I appreciate all of your

great efforts in this work that you are doing.Ms. BERTINI. Thank you.Mr. ACKERMAN. You mentioned before that part of the problem

was the inability to access the ports of Massawa and Assab, or yousaid the ports in Eritrea, leaving the impression that it was Eri-trea. Is that the impression that you wish to leave, that it was theEritreans that were not enabling us to use those ports? Why can’twe use the ports is the question.

Ms. BERTINI. First of all, let me say your voice was cutoff for justa second, but I got the end of your question, which is why can’t weuse the port, specifically, why? Is that correct?

Mr. ACKERMAN. Yes. Who is not enabling us to use the ports thatare in Eritrea?

Ms. BERTINI. The message from the Eritrean Government is, youcan use the ports, you can use them tomorrow, or at least this was


11

the message to me. Whether or not this has changed because of theoutbreak of more fighting in the last week, I do not know. But themessage of the Eritreans was, you can use the port tomorrow.

The message from the Ethiopians was, we don’t want you to usethe port, and besides, we don’t think it is necessary to use the port,because we think that for all of the food and everything else thatneeds to come in, there is enough capacity at the Djibouti port,with the Berbera port as back-up. I will relate a couple of thingson my discussions with both of them. In my discussions with thePrime Minister of Ethiopia, we discussed this, and he agreed thatif his analysis is wrong, his analysis being that the Djibouti portplus Berbera were enough, that I would come back to him and wewould discuss other options. He made it known that the Assab portwould be his last option to be discussed, but we would find anotherway to be able to get food and other goods into the country.

On the Eritrean side, I talked with them about by what meanswe could use the ports today, and there were several issues in-volved there. One is, there are some technical issues where therewould need to be some work done which the World Food Programis doing—in the event that that port would be available. Massawais not a port we would be using, we would be using the Assab port.On that side, we would need to, first of all, be assured that thereare no mines on the roads or alongside the roads.

Second, we would need to bring in an expatriate group of truck-ers in order to drive the trucks, and we would have to build hous-ing in the port and across the border in Ethiopia for the truckers.

Then also, we have——Mr. ACKERMAN. Is there an impediment to that? Would there be

somebody to prevent you from doing that?Ms. BERTINI. No. Assuming both countries said it was all right,

no.Mr. ACKERMAN. You don’t anticipate there would be objection to

that?Ms. BERTINI. Not if they agreed we could use the port. That

would be part of the usage of the port. It would be required. Wecouldn’t do it otherwise.

Then, can I continue? Would you like to hear the rest?Mr. ACKERMAN. Yes.Ms. BERTINI. Then we have the issue of staff in the port because

my understanding is that 75 percent of the stevedores, people whoworked in the port before were Ethiopian, so the port would haveto find more people.

So there are technical things that we are working on in order totry to be ready should we be allowed to use Assab port.

But the other issue, Mr. Ackerman, is that some donors havesome reticence about sending food for Ethiopia through Eritrea, be-cause 2 years ago, there were 70,000 tons of food which the Eri-treans appropriated and used themselves that was destined forEthiopia. I raised this question with the Eritrean authorities also,and their answer today is, they can assure us that they won’t dothat again.

Mr. ACKERMAN. Are you confident that there are sufficient trucksfor the relief effort in country?


12

Ms. BERTINI. No, there are not sufficient trucks for the relief ef-fort.

Mr. ACKERMAN. Have you put out a call for additional trucks?Ms. BERTINI. We have asked for additional resources, and the

World Food Program is bringing in 108 trucks that will be therethe 1st of June. They are from Sudan; we are leasing them fromthe Sudan. Other private-sector people are bringing in additionaltrucks and the World Food Program is bringing in 400 additionaltrucks.

Mr. ACKERMAN. I just wanted to remind you that part of thehuge problem the last time around, in 1983–1984, was that therewere so many different kinds of trucks that the major problem be-came getting parts, because you were able to get parts for thewrong trucks, and I just want to remind you to be alerted, to tryto coordinate trucks and parts from the same people.

An additional question that I have——Chairman GILMAN. The gentleman’s time has expired.Mr. ACKERMAN. May I just have one more quick question?Chairman GILMAN. Without objection.Mr. ACKERMAN. The effectiveness of the Ethiopian Government’s

Disaster Prevention and Preparedness Commission in their re-sponse, how would you evaluate their ability to do the job?

Ms. BERTINI. I think that they are professional. I think that theyhave been understanding of this problem and raising flags about itand I think that they have some good people who are well-orga-nized. It is, however, a bureaucracy, and like all bureaucracies, itsometimes moves slower than some of us would like. But theUnited Nations has a good relationship with them, and we hopethat we can work out any difficulties.

Chairman GILMAN. The gentleman’s time has expired.Mr. Meeks.Mr. MEEKS. Thank you, Mr. Chairman.I too just want to join in thanking you for all of the work that

you have been doing in trying to prevent further disaster over inEthiopia.

Let me ask this question, though. It seems as though it was justyesterday, although I know it was 16 years ago, when we werefaced with this kind of situation. I am wondering, with all of themodern technology of today, and with all of the opportunities, withreference to irrigation, et cetera, what are we doing or what hasbeen done or what can we do so that we can make sure that wedon’t have to react after the fact again; but we can prevent thisfrom happening beforehand by making sure that we are using ourmodern technology so that people won’t be affected by droughts, asthey are now?

Ms. BERTINI. I think in this part of the world, we are alwaysgoing to find that there are people who are trying to deal with thenegative effects of the drought. I think that this year is differentthan the mid-1980’s, because we—the governments, the United Na-tions, the United States—everybody is raising this flag relativelyearly to say, we really need to get this assistance now.

But I think that your question goes much deeper than that, andthat is, what could we be doing to help the people over the longterm?


13

There are some kinds of public works, in fact, a lot of publicworks that have been done, especially in Ethiopia and Eritrea,since the mid-1980’s, but because the land mass is so large andthere are so many people, it will take many more decades beforea lot of that is useful for the whole population is completed.

But to give you an example, there have been a lot of projectswhere the people themselves have worked on irrigation programs.They have worked on terracing for erosion control, because some-times when it rains it just wipes out so much top soil. Much of thearea where the livestock roam is very dry, it is very arid, and thereare big cracks that just form naturally in the ground. So there hasbeen a lot of work to bring rocks in. This is manual labor, it is verytough. By the way, the women carry the rocks mostly, the men justkind of put them in the ground.

But anyway, there has been a lot of work filling in a lot of thesecrevices, because otherwise, it cuts off the space that the animalswould have to move around.

But again, it is such a big place that even a significant amountof development work goes a relatively short way in terms of tryingto deal with a big problem like drought.

But when I think about the future, there are some kinds ofthings that could be done, and I will point to two, because theseare two of the biggest areas that we saw where there were reallygaps, and one of them is in livestock management. Since so manypeople, especially in this region, count on livestock for their liveli-hood, I think that much more could be done to bring in some exper-tise, to train people, local people in the regions, who could carry onthen this information about how to store food for your livestock,how to find water when there is very little water available, how tomake a decision when to sell before your cows die, a lot of differentkinds of things that our livestock expert on the mission was tellingus about. So I would hope we could build a network to help withthat.

The other network that is desperately critical is the health andwater network. This is something that just doesn’t exist very much.I don’t mean the wells as much as clean water sources. We wentto places throughout the region where if one was sick, one wouldhave to go many miles to find a clinic to be able to help. So youdon’t do that unless you are very sick, because there is no publictransportation. You go on the back of a donkey or somebody carriesyou. It just means that without that kind of an extension of med-ical care—for basic medicines, basic medicines for diarrhea andvaccinations, colds—many more people are at risk.

So I would answer you that those are two things that I thinkcould be done with a lot of effort but not too many resources.

Chairman GILMAN. The gentleman’s time has expired.Let me just mention, we have a series of votes we are being in-

terrupted with. It will be about 45 minutes of votes, so we aregoing to have to reduce our time for each Member.

Mr. Payne, please be brief.Mr. PAYNE. Thank you, Mr. Chairman. I will be brief.Let me certainly thank you, Ms. Bertini, for the fine work that

the World Food Program is doing. This is a problem. It seems tome, we should really be further ahead. I just listened to what you


14

said, and certainly, I am sure that you would appreciate morefunding for the famine early warning system. We have given $7million this year for that. But I think that is something that is cy-clical.

There was a big famine in 1962–1963. I was in the Wollo Prov-ince and Dese City in the 1972–1973 famine and spent time there.At that time, people were nomadic, though, and they were moving,and no one really knew the famine was happening. It was, as amatter of fact, referred to as the ‘‘unknown famine,’’ because theadministration of the country did not let out the fact that this fam-ine was occurring; and it was very, very devastating, and I remem-ber working up in that area back then. Then in the 1982–1983famine, the same thing happened.

Thus we know that they are cyclical, we know that they comeabout every 10 years.

It would appear to me that—it would seem like some of thethings that you have mentioned, but it seems to me that thereshould be a real world effort in trying to come up with a plan—because in the year 2008, 2009, or 2010, there is going to be an-other serious drought. We know that right now, as we are talking.So that is just an appeal, and perhaps we can work on that herethrough our State Department to push that with the OAU.

Let me just ask a quick question. On both Eritrea and Ethiopia,sanctions have been suggested, and I wonder, would sanctions im-pact the food program?

Ms. BERTINI. As I understand the sanctions, they are for arms,are they not?

Mr. PAYNE. Arms, and other—it will go beyond arms. I just won-der, has that been brought to your attention and what impactmight that have on your program?

Ms. BERTINI. I wouldn’t think it would have an impact, I wouldsay, unless there is a sanction on food and medicine and otherthings that are in short supply. That would, in fact, have an impacton the program.

Mr. Payne, I want to mention that the Secretary-General on the30th of March when he announced my appointment as specialenvoy, he also said he was creating a task force to be able to dealwith some of the longer-term issues of why droughts keep comingand what we can do about them, particularly in this region, so, Iwould refer you also to him and to Mr. Jacques Diouf, who hasbeen appointed to look into this.

Mr. PAYNE. Mr. Campbell and I have introduced a resolution 316that deals with the famine and trying to get additional supportfrom our government.

Thank you very much.Chairman GILMAN. Thank you, Mr. Payne.Ms. Bertini, we want to thank you for your time. We want to

thank the U.S. Embassy in London for its accommodations, and wehope we can do more of this with you as time goes on. Hopefully,there will be no more crises of this nature, but I am sure we willbe confronted with some.

I am going to recess our hearing until the votes are over. It willprobably be about a 45-minute period. We have one vote, plus 5-


15

minute votes. Thank you very much. The Committee stands in re-cess.

Ms. BERTINI. Thank you, Mr. Chairman.[Whereupon a short recess was taken.][Recess.]Mr. TANCREDO [presiding]. The Committee will come to order.I have a statement that I would like to read into the record be-

fore we proceed with testimony. This is the statement of Congress-man Tom Campbell, submitted for the record at the hearing of theHouse International Relations Committee on the looming famine inEthiopia.

I call today on Ethiopia to stop the massive attack recently launched on neigh-boring Eritrea and to return at once to the peace table under the auspices of theOrganization for American Unity.

As a Member of this Committee, and its Subcommittee on Africa, I traveled toEritrea and Ethiopia in 1998 shortly before the first outbreak of hostilities betweenthe two countries. Now, after 2 years of sporadic fighting followed by months ofstalemate, with troops in trenches opposing each other, Ethiopia launched an infan-try assault on Friday, May 12, 2000, with more than a quarter of a million infantrybacked by armored tanks. The attack went well into Eritrean territory, and well be-yond the remote, lightly populated area whose sovereignty has been contested eversince the war began.

There is no victory in the shameless massacre of 25,000 soldiers in a 3-day period,beginning last Friday at midnight. Over a year ago, I offered a resolution, alongwith my distinguished colleague, Congressman Donald Payne, that called on bothcountries to put down their weapons. That resolution, H. Con. Res. 46, passed theHouse of Representatives on October 26, 1999, and is pending in the Senate.

Now, the world is watching while precious lives and resources are being spent inbattle, when both are needed, instead, to ensure there is a harvest this year. Peoplein both countries are facing starvation conditions, yet Ethiopia has chosen to extendthis war. I am heart-broken, as I had such hopes for Ethiopia’s development, suchpride in their accomplishments, and maintain such love for her people.

It has not been easy to focus America’s attention upon the needs of Africa. Thiswar between two of Africa’s poorest countries gives us a perfect excuse for those whowould turn away and continue to do so.

I will enter the statement into the record.[The prepared statement of Mr. Campbell appears in the appen-

dix.]I will now introduce Mr. Hugh Parmer. We welcome Mr. Parmer,

Assistant Administrator of the Bureau for Humanitarian Responseof the U.S. Agency for International Development. Mr. Parmer’sbureau coordinates disaster assistance and emergency response. Herecently returned from a trip to the Horn.

We are very interested in hearing your findings, Mr. Parmer,particularly with regard to the logistical hurdles of getting ade-quate supplies of food into the remote parts of southeast Ethiopia.

STATEMENT OF THE HONORABLE HUGH Q. PARMER, ASSIST-ANT ADMINISTRATOR, BUREAU FOR HUMANITARIAN RE-SPONSE, U.S. AGENCY FOR INTERNATIONAL DEVELOPMENT

Mr. PARMER. Thank you very much, Mr. Chairman, for the op-portunity to come and appear before the Committee today. I wantto thank this Committee and, in fact, the entire Congress for thebroad bipartisan support which humanitarian operations aroundthe world have received. Since the Bureau for Humanitarian Re-sponse, which I head, contains both the Office of Foreign DisasterAssistance and the Food for Peace office, we are the major re-sponder—the 911 responder, if you like—for the U.S. Government.


16

I spent 14 days, beginning on March the 11th in the Horn of Af-rica, and I would like to, if I may, share with you some of my expe-riences there. I will of course submit written testimony which willbe more formal in nature, and I will be glad to answer any ques-tions that Members of the Committee might have.

If I could go to that second map, you can see, of course, the Hornof Africa identified on the map in front of us. If I could make thesecond microphone work, we will see if I do better with it than Idid the first.

My trip took me first to Addis Ababa in Ethiopia, and from AddisAbaba into the southern part of the country to a town called Gode.Gode is in the Somalia region. Its inhabitants and people in thesurrounding area are pastoralists by nature; they travel with theirherds. It is the area which was identified to us as the most heavilyimpacted by the drought.

Certainly, when we arrived there, we had reason to believe thatthat was an accurate description. The first impression that you gotin Gode, as you stepped off the aircraft into a car and headed to-ward town, was the large number of livestock that were dead androtting in the fields. Over on the monitor we just gave you a bitof a picture of some dead cattle that we came across as we droveinto town.

We were told that virtually all of the cattle in the region haddied. Sheep and goat casualties were in the 70 and 80 percentrange; even the camels, who are the most resilient beasts thatthese pastoralists have in their herds, were beginning to die, andthat problem was compounded by an Anthrax epidemic that hadbroken out among the cattle.

In Gode itself, we saw a stark, border-like kind of town, dustyand dry; there was no green in the entire region. What we saw inGode were two things. First, a therapeutic feeding center wheresmall children who are qualified by a height-weight ratio werebrought into the center and provided with necessary nutrients totreat their malnutrition. That center had 100 children enrolled init at the time that I arrived there, 10 of whom, however, of theoriginal enrollees had died in the week before my arrival.

You will see a slightly different number in my testimony, becauseother Members of our parties got different numbers—but the localemergency committee people told me that 91 children under 5years of age had died in the town of Gode in the 2 weeks beforemy arrival there.

There was also a supplemental feeding center. At that supple-mental feeding center, there were approximately 850 children thatwere being served. When I was there, there were another 500mothers and children in a crowd outside the center waiting fortheir children to be measured and weighed to see if they couldqualify.

To give you a little bit of the human sense of it, I talked to awoman who had a very malnourished child in her arms. I askedher about her child through an interpreter, to which she replied,‘‘Well, this was one of my three children. I had three children whenI arrived here 2 months ago; two of them have died.’’ My questionthen was, ‘‘Aren’t you receiving assistance and help from the gov-


17

ernment?’’ She said ‘‘Yes, they are giving us wheat. My babies can’teat wheat.

The supplemental feeding center was understaffed; it had insuffi-cient food commodities; they were feeding at half the recommendedlevel for the children.

Upon my departure from Gode that day, I ordered a UnitedStates-funded civilian airlift of the proper types of food, F–75 for-mula, Corn-Soy-blend (CSB) mix and high-protein biscuits to belanded in Gode. They arrived within a week.

We visited a small town near Gode, just to get a sense of whatwas happening in the more rural areas. There were similar cir-cumstances. I know our time is limited, and so I won’t try to giveyou every anecdote that I ran across, other than to say that, in thistown, we actually saw dead camels to illustrate again the tremen-dous losses in the only asset that these people have.

From Gode, we went to the north to the area around Lalibela.This is the area which was the epicenter of the 1984 famine inwhich over 1 million people starved to death. From there we tookabout a 2-hour drive out to a place called Wadhwan. What we sawalong that drive were conditions that were considerably better thanwhat we had seen in the south, but certainly marginal.

One of the things we came across was a group of people whowere selling their livestock at a spontaneous market. When youtalk to farmers about why they are selling their oxen when theirox is the only animal they have to plow the fields, they tell you itis so that they can get a little bit of money and hopefully make itthrough the period until the major rains. You say, ‘‘Well, then,what are you going to do with no oxen?’’ They report that they aregoing to lease their land to someone who has animals.

Now, I am from Texas. My family is from the south. My grand-father was a sharecropper. What I learned was that sharecroppers,people who farm the land for someone else, were the poor peoplein the society and the wealthier people were those who owned theland. It is the reverse situation in this part of Ethiopia. The personwho has the animal is wealthy; the person who has the land—itis a reverse kind of a lease environment.

The situation up there was not as bad as in the south, but whatwe found was that, in the area that we were, virtually everyonewas receiving food assistance, and everyone was dependent on foodassistance.

There are two rains in this part of the world. The ‘‘meher’’ or thelong rains, and the so-called ‘‘belg’’ rain, or the short rain, whichwas supposed to have occurred immediately prior to our arrival inthe area, had not occurred. Therefore, the belg crop upon whichthese people in the north are largely dependent had not occurred;there was no crop.

I went to, as you can see over on the monitor to my left, a sitewhere the government was distributing United States-contributedgrain to a crowd of about 2,000 people. With an interpreter, Italked to that group of people, and as I talked with them, I discov-ered that this distribution, this once-a-month distribution, was allthey had to eat unless they slaughtered their livestock, which someof them were doing. But as you can see, this is a healthier groupof people than what we saw in Gode. Nonetheless, not only was


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this the only distribution they were receiving, but they were athalf-rations of distributed food, that is, U.S. food distributedthrough the Ethiopia Emergency Committee. These were peoplewho were not in an immediate, prefamine condition, but these arepeople whose existence was very marginal, and if they had anyinterruption in the supply of food aid, they would quickly findthemselves in prefamine conditions.

I went to Kenya, I did not get into the northern region where thedrought has had a similar effect as in southern Ethiopia, but I didhave an opportunity to meet with a number of people from south-ern Sudan. The one piece of good news in the trip is that Sudanthis year has had one of the best harvests in recent times. In fact,the need for food assistance, although still there in Sudan, is lessthan it has been in subsequent years, and that is a good thing inthat those commodities are badly needed in other places.

I went from Kenya to Baidoa in Somalia. Just a brief aside, Mr.Chairman. It was a rather remarkable visit. I was greeted in termsof my representation of the United States, like a hero. People saidto me, ‘‘We will never forget here in Baidoa what the United Statesof America did when you led the intervention to prevent the famineback in the early 1990’s.’’

The governor of the area said to me, ‘‘You should consider thisyour second home. We know you have been told it is unsafe here.’’I was the first American official in southern Somalia since thewithdrawal of the peacekeepers. He said, ‘‘I know you have beentold it is unsafe; this part of Somalia is the safest place in theworld for you.’’ He also said, ‘‘First George Bush came and now youhave come.’’ I said, ‘‘There is a bit of a difference in our pay scale.’’

We found the people in Baidoa, that was the city of death in theSomali famine, to be in remarkably good shape now. There waswater in the stream in the town, people were watering their ani-mals, the animals looked healthy, the children looked healthy. Iwas very favorably impressed with the condition of the peoplethere.

In a nearby rural village, the people still were in pretty goodshape, but obviously their condition was more marginal. Again,pastoralists in this area are dependent upon their flocks and theirherds. The animals did look good, but they were good because ofa UNICEF-funded water project that produced water.

We then went to Djibouti. Djibouti, of course, is the area and theport through which our logistics are having to operate. We visitedthe port, we talked to logistics people. I think I got a reasonableassessment of the capacity of that port at the time I was there, andI will be glad to answer questions about that.

I think the best way to describe it is that theoretically, the portof Djibouti will handle the commodities that we need to move intothe region during the next few months. But I emphasize ‘‘theoreti-cally,’’ because our experience is that in a humanitarian relief oper-ation, nothing works at 90 percent capacity. That would be re-quired for the port of Djibouti to successfully handle all of the ma-terials coming in.

In Somalia, I did not get to Berbera, but I have sent an assess-ment team there. That port can handle a little bit of the overflowthat might be required out of Djibouti. The capacities will be


19

roughly 150,000 to 180,000 metric tons and 25,000 to 30,000 metrictons out of Berbera.

Finally, I went to Eritrea. Eritrea had had a bit more rain, a bitmore of a harvest, than anywhere in Ethiopia at that time. But atthe same time, they do have drought conditions along the coast,and there are approximately half a million people who have beenwar-affected prior to the most recent conflict and who have movedinto internally displaced person camps.

The observation I had there was that the Eritrean Governmenthad done a remarkably good job from a humanitarian perspectivein terms of taking care of the people in those camps. I saw peoplein those camps who had been displaced from their homes for 22months and who were in the second location to which they hadbeen moved. Yet the camp had an operating school and an oper-ating clinic. The children, although they might have respiratorytroubles and reported diarrheal troubles, looked well-nourished.They certainly were active and running around and wanted tocome and see us and talk with us. There were complaints in thesecamps about the quality of the food, but not the quantity of thefood. They wanted more spices, and I told them we didn’t do spices,although I am from Texas where we have quite a propensity forthat kind of thing.

To back up just a step, my impression of the government’s re-sponse in Ethiopia was also favorable. These people had drawndown their grain reserves in an effort to help their own people.They had gone into the open market and bought 100,000 metrictons of grain from the equatorial area of Eritrea, the eastern areaof Ethiopia, which this year had a grain surplus, more than whatwas needed to feed its own population. I would like to think thatthat is at least partially the result of good international assistancespearheaded by USAID in the development arena, encouragingthese folks to develop a market economy. You have to rememberthat just a very few years ago Ethiopia and Eritrea were a Marxist,centralized economy.

After my trip to the Horn, I went from the Horn to Europe. Iknow that Congress, as we are, is always concerned about theUnited States not sharing an oversupply or an overcapacity of theburden. At that point in time, there were no European pledges thathad been made for assistance to the Horn of Africa.

While in Europe, I met with the European Union representa-tives, both of their counterparts to the Food for Peace office and toour Office of Foreign Disaster Assistance. Both of them indicatedthat they would be responsive.

You know, you take so many trips that you feel you can’t meas-ure the productivity. But in that trip, after my departure, I waspleased to find that the Europeans upped their pledge to 432,000metric tons of food. I visited briefly in France with the foreign min-ister’s humanitarian coordinator. A week after I returned fromtalking with him, the French airlifted the same kind of commod-ities into southern Ethiopia that we had previously airlifted, andthe French announced the availability of the use of their militaryfacilities in Djibouti as logistical assistance to the international hu-manitarian relief operation.


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I think my time has expired, Mr. Chairman, but I just wantedto give you some reflection of the human side of what we sawthere, as opposed to just the numbers that we usually talk about.

[The prepared statement of Mr. Parmer appears in the appen-dix.]

Chairman GILMAN. Thank you very much, Mr. Parmer, for givingus a good overview.

When you returned from your recent trip, you stated that with-out the use of the port of Assab in Eritrea, you didn’t think thatfamine could be averted in that part of the world. Given the re-newed warfare, do you have any more current assessment with re-gard to that?

Mr. PARMER. I think the operative word is ‘‘guarantee.’’ As I said,theoretically, the two ports that are available to us, the port inDjibouti and the port in Berbera, provide enough theoretical capac-ity to meet the need, and we are working very hard to enhance thecapacity of those ports. We have contributed $600,000 to the WorldFood Program ports’ renewal operation for the improvement oper-ation in Djibouti.

But I would not retract the statement I made. If we had thatthird alternative, I think we could guarantee that sufficient com-modities could be delivered to help the people. I think we can getthere without it. I don’t want to be too negative, because I thinkwe can use the existing facilities, but it is more difficult.

Chairman GILMAN. Mr. Parmer, how much are the French con-tributing to the port renovation in Djibouti, and how much are wecontributing?

Mr. PARMER. We have contributed just over $600,000. I don’tknow the amount of the French contribution. Let me see if one ofmy colleagues does.

I will have to get that for you, Mr. Chairman.[The information referred to appears in the appendix.]Chairman GILMAN. What is our total contribution, to date, with

regard to Ethiopia and Eritrea?Mr. PARMER. The total contribution, to date, for Ethiopia is al-

most a quarter of a billion dollars. I would say our pledge and con-tribution—that is, what we are committed to do, as well as whathas actually arrived—I would estimate another $50 million for Eri-trea. That may be a tad high.

Chairman GILMAN. Thank you.Ms. Lee.Ms. LEE. Thank you, Mr. Chairman.Thank you, Mr. Parmer, for your testimony and for everything

that you are doing to help in this major crisis on the continent.I am reminded today, and I am sure we all remember our friend

and colleague, Congressman Mickey Leland, a good friend. Also,Joyce Williams and his delegation, who were actually killed inEthiopia during a plane crash in the late 1980’s; and their missionduring that time was to take food to feed starving children in Ethi-opia. Their unfortunate and untimely deaths focused this country’sattention on the plight of hunger and starvation in the Horn of Af-rica.

I want to ask you a couple of things with regard to our sustainedeffort during that time in terms of humanitarian assistance. What


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has USAID, in terms of the amount of money, done for the last 10or 15 years? Has it been constant, consistent? Has it gone up ordown? What has our contribution level been and how has it fluc-tuated?

Mr. PARMER. If I could differentiate between emergency humani-tarian support and development assistance, our development as-sistance has been relatively constant. Our humanitarian assist-ance, of course, goes up and down, based on the circumstances thatwe find.

This is a very poor country that is chronically drought-affected.So in a year like 1998, when they had a reasonably good harvest,you might not need as much assistance. But in a year like this, or1994 where we had drought conditions, the humanitarian assist-ance goes way up.

Ms. LEE. The famine early warning system, when was that setup? I know it is supposed to provide early warning of a drought.It is my understanding that reports were issued in June or July1999 indicating that a drought condition was upon us.

How do we—how did we respond to that? Was it in an expedi-tious fashion? Did we wait a while? What did we do?

Mr. PARMER. The answer to your first question is that the famineearly warning system was created after the 1984 drought, and Ithink we could pretty well demonstrate that it has been responsiblefor—not for there not being any more droughts, but for there notbeing any more mass famines at the time we saw.

We actually received reports from our USAID mission out therebefore the July report came out, that the belg rains, the short sea-son rains, had failed; and in June, a disaster was declared by theAmbassador, and we began trying to respond. In July, we contrib-uted 28,000 metric tons of emergency food through the World FoodProgram. We did an initial assessment in Ethiopia and Djibouti. InAugust, we contributed another 21,000 metric tons of food throughthe World Food Program, and also contributed $400,000 to procurethe special kinds of foods that are necessary for malnourished chil-dren. It is always the weakest people in a community that sufferthe most from one of these crises.

We went on then to provide additional funding to Save the Chil-dren, to UNICEF; and again, in August, another 15,000 metric tonof foods went to Catholic Relief Services. Finally, in September,57,000 metric tons were provided. So we moved forward, and Ithink that is the reason that, at this point, the drought-relateddeaths can be measured maybe in the hundreds.

Now, that sounds terrible to say that hundreds of deaths rep-resent any kind of victory, but in a country where we saw over amillion people starve to death in 1984, that is victory. This is aplace that is chronically food-insecure. People die every year frommalnutrition and malnutrition-related illnesses. But I think our re-sponse was prompt. We could not predict the extent of the problemthat occurred when the belg rains fell again this spring. The num-bers had been inclining upward, but they suddenly took off on avery steep curve.

But again, I think we are ahead of it to the extent of preventingthe kind of catastrophe that they have seen over there in the past.


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Ms. LEE. How has the war impacted, delayed or hampered ourefforts and the efforts of other donors?

Mr. PARMER. So far, the first thing I want to make clear is thatthe United States never made a linkage between the behavior ofEthiopia and Eritrea in their conflict and our commitment to pro-vide humanitarian assistance to people who otherwise have gonewithout. So there was no delay, at least on the part of the U.S.Government, that was related to political or policy issues.

The worst part, the epicenter of the near-famine that we are fac-ing over there, is in the south, and the war is in the north. So atthis point, the war has not physically impaired our ability to de-liver goods. Now, what we worry about is the availability of suffi-cient trucking capacity to move the stuff to where it is needed.

I met with Prime Minister Meles in Ethiopia and expressed thatconcern to him. He told me directly that that would not occur. Thewords he used were, ‘‘We are not going to let 1984 happen again.We look upon that as our holocaust, and I will not allow trucks tobe diverted from the humanitarian effort to support whatever mili-tary operation might be going on. In fact,’’ said he, ‘‘I would do theopposite if I had to. I would divert military trucks to carry humani-tarian food.’’

Now, I say that at the same time that I talked to our Ambas-sador in Djibouti the day before yesterday, and there weren’t anytrucks in Djibouti. I understand our Ambassador in Ethiopia hastalked to Prime Minister Meles, and he has indicated that hewould immediately see to the problem. I got a report just before Icame over that indicated that truck availability was opening upagain.

Ms. LEE. Thank you very much.Chairman GILMAN. The gentlewoman’s time has expired. Thank

you, Ms. Lee.Mr. Tancredo.Mr. TANCREDO. Thank you, Mr. Chairman. You mentioned, Mr.

Parmer, that we have provided a quarter-billion dollars in emer-gency aid in Ethiopia. How much do you think we would have togive in order that they would not—is there any way that we canbuy them out of doing what they are doing I suppose is the bottomline?

Mr. PARMER. You mean from the point of view of their conflict,Congressman?

Mr. TANCREDO. That’s right, yes.Mr. PARMER. I am in the humanitarian response business. I

think maybe that is a question that should be better addressed—would be better addressed to my colleagues at the State Depart-ment.

Mr. TANCREDO. I know you have a baccalaureate in politicalscience. Maybe I will test that instead.

Mr. PARMER. I think my view would be what I expressed earlier,and that is, that it should remain the policy of the United Statesnot to link humanitarian assistance with politics, whether to en-courage a country to do things that we want them to do or discour-age them from things we don’t want them to do. We are really notin the business of helping countries; we are in the business of help-ing people.


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I mean, I know the discomfort that we all feel when we providehumanitarian assistance to a people who are fighting a war. Wethink to ourselves, why should we be providing assistance whenthey are expending resources on something else? But the kid I sawin that Somali mother’s arms in southern Ethiopia didn’t knowwhether his country was at war or not, the mother didn’t carewhether her country was at war or not, and she wasn’t going to getany food if the United States of America and France, it turned out,hadn’t airlifted food into Gode.

So it is not an easy situation.Mr. TANCREDO. Of course not, and the question was at least par-

tially rhetorical, I suppose.But it is intriguing in a way, because we look at the extent to

which we go—commendably, I think—to provide that kind of reliefin this situation, making sure that both sides are not—making surethat our ability to provide that aid to both sides is not impeded bythe conflict. Then it is impossible for me to ignore a situation overwhich you have no control, but in a way just thinking aloud aboutSudan and our inability or lack of desire to provide that same de-gree of support for people there. I mean, you have problems with—logistical problems with people blocking the aid effort.

But nonetheless, all that aside, the recent demonstrations out-side the embassy, to what extent—and again, I am drawing onyour political science degrees and background perhaps more thananything else——

Mr. PARMER. That was a long time ago.Mr. TANCREDO. I saw it. I picked it out in your background.What was the basis for those? What do you think prompted that

kind of response outside of our Embassy?Mr. PARMER. My guess would be that the demonstrations of that

type probably did not just occur spontaneously and that the Gov-ernment of Ethiopia was unhappy with the positions that we weretaking in the United Nations. That is one of the things I learnedover there, and that is, that both sides can be very unhappy withyou at the same time.

Mr. TANCREDO. Thank you.Mr. PARMER. I might add, though, that we are providing this

year 125,000 metric tons of food assistance for Sudan, and as I saidearlier, fortunately, the one piece of really good, positive news I gotout of my trip over there was the report from southern Sudan thatthey had had a pretty good harvest and that they were in need ofless food assistance than they have been in prior years.

Mr. TANCREDO. Thank you very much for your testimony. I haveno other questions.

Chairman GILMAN. Thank you, Mr. Tancredo.Did you have a further question? Ms. Lee.Ms. LEE. Very quickly, you didn’t mention Italy in terms of it

being a donor country. Just knowing a bit about the history, canyou talk about that a little bit in terms of what their role is, orhas been, or is not?

Mr. PARMER. Somewhere in these papers I have a list of the do-nations by country. Since I don’t know exactly how to put myhands on it, Ms. Lee, perhaps I could send that to you.


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But I will say that I did meet with officials of the Italian Govern-ment, when I was in Rome to talk with Ms. Bertini and the WorldFood Program people. The Italian Government officials indicatedthat they not only had made contributions, in particular, to Eritreawhich, as you know, was a long-time colony of Italy, ever since1900, but also that they intended to make additional contributions.

I can get you the exact numbers.[The information referred to appears in the appendix.]Ms. LEE. Thank you.Chairman GILMAN. Thank you, Mr. Parmer. We thank you for

being here today.We will, before proceeding with our next panel, I had to forgo my

opening statement while Ms. Bertini was waiting to go on. I justwould like to make a few opening remarks with regard to thishearing.

Thursday last week, shortly after midnight, Ethiopian troopslaunched a major military offensive against Eritrea, and accordingto the sketchy reports we have received, wave after wave of Ethio-pian infantry threw themselves against fortified Eritrean positions.Eventually, they were successful at breaking through the Eritreandefenses, and the Ethiopian armed forces have now penetrated farinto Eritrean territory and appear to be trying to outflank the mainbody of Eritrean troops on the border.

We do not know yet what the death toll of this latest round offighting will be, but it will likely be tens of thousands. Notwith-standing the Organization of African Unity peace proposal that hasbeen on the table for over a year and which both countries claimto accept, it is apparent that Ethiopia has been planning this at-tack for a long period of time.

I have suspected for some time that Ethiopia’s leadership favoreda military solution to the conflict, and in January I wrote in theWashington Post that, ‘‘Ethiopia appears prepared to reignite theirwar. It has become clear that Ethiopia is hostile to the peace agree-ment and is stalling for time to recruit and train tens of thousandsof additional troops.’’

After that article appeared, I received hundreds of angry letters.The Ethiopian Foreign Minister himself launched a very personal,public attack against me. Great pains were taken to point out thatEthiopia had not rejected the peace plan and that its objectionswere merely technical. Again and again, I was told that Ethiopiahad no intention of restarting the war.

For example, the Ethiopian ambassador wrote, ‘‘First and fore-most, my government is committed to ending the war through ne-gotiations. We have, without condition, supported the OAU frame-work as a tool for ending the war and will continue to do so.’’

For the sake of the thousands who have died over this past weekand the thousands more who will likely perish in this senselesswar, we sincerely wish that my suspicions had been wrong.

The war is inextricably linked to the famine, which is the focusof our hearing today, and in southeastern Ethiopian parts of thecentral islands, food shortages have reached a critical stage. Eightmillion of Ethiopia’s 60 million citizens are now at risk of starva-tion. Nearly 1 billion metric tons of food are going to be required,and our nation is prepared to supply a portion of it.


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The cycle of famine in Ethiopia will not be broken, however, aslong as the government continues to spend a third of its budget onits military. The International Institute for Strategic Studies esti-mates that Ethiopia spent $467 million on the military just lastyear, a dramatic increase over previous years.Economic develop-ment efforts have been put on hold while scarce resources are com-mitted to their war effort.

Let us be very plain. What is taking place in Ethiopia today isa man-made disaster. Without the war, there would not be a fam-ine on this scale. The decisions of the Governments of Ethiopia andEritrea have directly contributed to the dire conditions of their pop-ulations. This is the same pattern we saw in the early 1980’s whenthe horrific Dergue regime under Mengestu used famine to makewar on its own people. How regrettable that the current Govern-ments of Eritrea and Ethiopia, which had valiantly fought againstthe Dergue, now share this aspect with it.

We thank our witness for joining us today, and we look forwardto the testimony of our other witnesses.

Thank you again, Mr. Parmer. We appreciate your patience.Mr. PARMER. Thank you.Chairman GILMAN. We will now call our next panel.Our next panel includes two distinguished witnesses, Dr. Ste-

phen Morrison, who is no stranger to our Committee, havingserved as a staff member of the African Affairs Subcommittee from1987 to 1991.

Welcome, Dr. Morrison.After launching USAID’s Office of Transition Initiatives, Dr.

Morrison joined the State Department’s policy planning staff andrecently assumed the directorship of the African Studies Programat the Center for Strategic and International Studies.

Joining him is Mr. Gary Shaye, Vice President of InternationalPrograms at Save the Children. In a 25-year record of service withthat distinguished organization, Mr. Shaye has served in the Do-minican Republic, in Nepal and Bhutan. His current responsibil-ities include Save the Children’s operations in some 46 countries.

Thank you both for being with us today.Chairman GILMAN. Dr. Morrison, you may summarize your state-

ment, and your full statement will be made a part of the record.The same for Mr. Shaye.

I am going to ask Mr. Tancredo if he would chair this panel,since I have to go on to another meeting.

Mr. TANCREDO. Please proceed.

STATEMENT OF J. STEPHEN MORRISON, Ph.D., DIRECTOR, AF-RICAN STUDIES PROGRAM, CENTER FOR STRATEGIC ANDINTERNATIONAL STUDIES

Dr. MORRISON. Thank you, Mr. Chairman. I am very pleased tobe here today. I was asked to prepare some comments yesterday onthe broader political and military context in which this famine isunfolding. I will do my best and attempt to be brief in a situationwhich is highly fluid, highly uncertain, and highly dangerous todayin the evolving war between Ethiopia and Eritrea.

Before I begin, I would like to put our session here in a bit ofcontext. Seventeen years ago, when the 1983–1984 famine was first


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beginning to break, we had no AID mission in Addis. The issue ofeffective humanitarian relief in the Horn of Africa had not surfacedin several years, over a decade.

It was a very divisive issue within Congress at that time. Within16 months, there had been one very important bipartisan congres-sional delegation drawn from this Committee that resulted in a $1billion supplemental that was also put forward with very strong bi-partisan support. That was an essential event in building the bi-partisan coalition around effective humanitarian assistance glob-ally. It was rooted in that phenomenon and in that motion.

I believe that the leadership here in Congress remains critical,and I think there is much that you should be quite proud of. Manyof the principles, practices and the norms of humanitarian assist-ance were forged in that period and applied globally.

I think we also, as this famine unfolds in Ethiopia and Eritreaagainst a backdrop of war, we have several very important advan-tages or assets that we need to continue to remind ourselves of.

First, I have mentioned the bipartisan coalition in support of ef-fective humanitarian action. Second is the administration itself.USAID, both here in Washington and through the leadership of theBureau of Humanitarian Response and our missions in bothAsmara and Addis are extremely capable and focused on this, andI think they deserve to be commended for what has been done sofar. This is a very professionalized operation, it is very quick off themark, and it has been very effective for this cycle of famine. TheEritrean and Ethiopian Governments both have capacities they didnot have 17 years ago, and the regional infrastructure, as weak-ened and difficult as it is, still permits some quick action.

Now I would just like to quickly turn to a few comments. Firstof all, we should keep clear, as we look at the war and the questionof how the war impacts the humanitarian situation, we shouldkeep clear that the responsibility for this intense, expansive warthat resumed last Friday and that now reaches into Eritrea’s inte-rior—that the responsibility rests with the two adversaries andthem alone. We and other external players, such as the OAU andthe U.N. Security Council, are not the cause of this protracted 2-year crisis, now compounded by famine that threatens to escalateand endure in ways that will gravely weaken each State and dam-age the already frail surrounding region. Each side at varyingpoints has attempted to lay blame upon outsiders for their failureto resolve the regional border dispute. We should disregard thesediversions and focus clearly upon the base calculations of the twoparties.

Indeed, the administration deserves special credit, I believe, forthe sustained creative efforts that have been made by SpecialEnvoy Anthony Lake, Assistant Secretary Rice, and NSE DirectorGayle Smith, along with their Algerian counterparts acting on be-half of the OAU. This has been an exceptional instance of diplo-matic investment. This has amounted to a full court press over aperiod of well over 2 years now; it is an enormous, continual anddiversified investment. It has not worked, admittedly, but I thinkwe should keep ourselves very aware of what this investment, thescale and the scope and the integrity of it, is.


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These outside interventions have revealed the grave limits tohigh-level diplomacy, and they have raised very troubling questionsabout what strategies and approaches can work in circumstancesin which the parties themselves are so resistant to a negotiatedsettlement. We are at risk right now of drawing a conclusion thatwe should not make this kind of investment in this type of crisiszone. I would argue against that. The fact that we have not hadsuccess up to now does not mean that this type of serious, diplo-matic, bilateral and multilateral investment cannot work elsewhereand cannot work again in the future in terms of the Ethiopian andEritrean crisis.

Our efforts diplomatically have put forward a very importantparadox in terms of the Ethiopia-Eritrea conflict. These two adver-saries are in essential agreement on a framework to the border warthat began in May 1998. But the closer that these parties came tofinal closure over this dispute over a barren stretch of ground, theharder it seemed for them to finally sign off on that agreement.The adversaries appear even more starkly incapable of having thewill and the capacity to close this deal.

This has led people to begin questioning what is the nature ofthis conflict. It has led to the conclusion that this is, in fact—whathad originally been understood as a border dispute is, in fact,something larger. It is a war between two highly interdependentstates. It is a war that has all of the complex motivations and vola-tile emotions and deep hostilities that that implies.

We have to begin to ask, where does this new phase of warfarelead? What is at stake in terms of U.S. interests? Wyhat are thepolicies we should pursue?

I would argue that based on past history, sadly, there is a veryhigh probability that this war will drag on and transmute alongnew fronts. Ambitions of each side are highly uncertain, but theyreach well beyond the trench lines and disputed ground aroundBadme, Zalambessa and Assab.

There will be a strong impulse, I would also argue, in the comingmonths to make use of air power, particularly on the Ethiopianside, where there has been a massive investment in air capacityand where Ethiopia now enjoys considerable superiority. I want toremind you that just 2 years ago this month, both sides, as thisdispute broke, engaged in aerial bombardments of civilian popu-lations.

This fight that is under way right now is consciously over some-thing much larger. It is rooted in national honor, historical griev-ances, and the blow-back from the separation 7 years ago thismonth between Ethiopia and Eritrea into two separate nations. Itis about—this war is about two nations who have altogether losttrust in one another and have lost any vision of how they are goingto relate to one another in peace.

It will be very difficult to move back from where we are todayto the earlier focus upon a border dispute along a line of groundin a barren part of Ethiopia and Eritrea. The game has changed.We are going to need to look at this problem in a much differentway.

Disturbingly, this expansive war has certain echoes with the1970’s and 1980’s. Worsening conflict is unfolding parallel with


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deepening famine. An international arms bazaar continues apacetoday as we speak. Fortunately, we had the Security Council passthe embargo last night. This bazaar, this arms bazaar has enabledand consolidated hard-line interests on both sides and it has fedthe dilution of military triumph.

When both sides entered this war last Friday, military com-manders on each side were optimistic that they would see results.Each side entered this conflict confident that they would get whatthey wanted. There is something bizarre and odd and deeply dis-turbing about that.

We have to pay attention here, as we have in Angola and SierraLeone and other crisis areas, to the reckless marketing of weaponsto both sides, often by the same vendors. This has fed the worsttendencies of both sides, and it has certainly not led to deterrents,it has led to the opposite. The war is reordering the resurroundingregion in very important ways. It distracts and weakens regionalpressure upon Khartoum to respect its human rights, to end its in-ternal wars, and to end its support of international terrorism. Itencourages new vulnerabilities to attack for Djibouti and it encour-ages arms transfers into already chaotic zones of Somalia.

How should we think about the war’s impact on humanitarianoperations? There has been some comment about Massawa andAssab, the lack of access to these ports and on limits on trucking.I want to add a few other points.

The war in the famine zones is geographically segregated. HughParmer made this point. This is very unfortunate. That means thatmost of the relief that is going into Ethiopia or Eritrea is not goingto be subject to the predations of armed units as we have seen incountless other wars. This is a different type of war, and we arefortunate there. We will be able, I think, to guard the integrity ofhumanitarian operations far more in this instance than in manyothers.

The exception, where we need to be thinking about down theroad—the exception is where the war and the humanitarian crisiswill intersect, which is presently in the interior areas of Eritrea.If fighting persists there and if it results, as would seem to be vir-tually inevitable, in massive displacement of civilians, we are goingto have an emerging humanitarian crisis in the middle of an armedconflict as we have seen in the Balkans, in Angola and in SierraLeone, and there we will be back into a very difficult and complexgame.

I want to add also, there are hundreds of thousands of displacedEthiopians in Northern Tigray along the border areas. As the warhas resumed, one should be asking, to what degree this populationhas been redisplaced and access to them disturbed?

If war persists and intensifies, we can anticipate further forcedexpulsions in both Addis and Asmara of Eritrean and Ethiopiannationals respectively. We should be very vigilant on human rightsgrounds to this phenomenon. Close to 100,000 have already beenexpelled forcibly.

The railroad and road channels from Djibouti are the path alongwhich both the humanitarian assistance and the armaments flow.There is a close overlap. It is very difficult to disentangle arms andhumanitarian relief along the road and rail links leading from


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Djibouti into Ethiopia. I would argue that this makes for a very al-luring target on military grounds.

I have spoken to some of our officials here to try and get someestimate of how real is the risk of attack upon that line if this warintensifies, but I think it is a real threat and we need to look moreclosely at it. Mention has been made of the prospect of aerial bomb-ing of civilian targets. If it moves into urban environments likeAsmara or northern Ethiopian urban environments, you couldcause very serious damage to those populations in a very shorttime. If Assab comes under siege as many have argued it mightand it suffers extensive damage to its port and other infrastruc-ture, that will have long-term consequences for the annual fer-tilizer, fuel and grain shipments into Ethiopia.

I want to make one final comment, which is that Somaliland,which has provided the port of Berbera, which for years was a re-fueling station and air base for the United States during the coldwar, Somaliland is a state-led port of relative stability that hasbegun to function and has been searching for the opportunities toengage donors and others in support of their efforts, with minimalsuccess up to now. Paradoxically, this famine is bringing resourcesand engagement there. One hopes that this will result in a positivechange and reinforcement of positive efforts that are under way inSomaliland.

Last, final comments on where do we go with policy? I think ourinterests in this conflict are to adopt a measured detachment fromeach of the adversaries. To address the grave humanitarian de-mands, while seeking to contain the spread of this war and eventu-ally diffuse it. At some point in time, we are going to have to getthe parties focused back upon their vision of living peacefully withone another, but that is a remote—a remote option at the moment.

A resolution of this war will not likely be achieved in the nearterm. It requires a strategy of 1 to 2 years, and it requires a veryheavy emphasis on building transatlantic alliances. We need totoday intensify our consultations with our European partners anddevise mechanisms for moving ahead. At the moment, we do nothave effective transatlantic mechanisms.

We have mentioned the arms embargo. We need to begin takinga very serious look at our multilateral and bilateral assistance.

[The prepared statement of Dr. Morrison appears in the appen-dix.]

Mr. TANCREDO. Thank you, Dr. Morrison. The bells of course in-dicate that we have a vote.

Mr. Shaye, if you have your testimony and can give it within thetimeframe, we should be able to handle it.

STATEMENT OF GARY SHAYE, VICE PRESIDENT,INTERNATIONAL PROGRAMS, SAVE THE CHILDREN, USA

Mr. SHAYE. Good afternoon, Mr. Chairman, Members of the Com-mittee and distinguished guests. Thank you for inviting Save theChildren to speak with you about the current crisis in Ethiopia andshare with you the work that we are doing to respond to the crit-ical needs of children in this emergency. I am hoping that while Iam speaking, you will get some video footage of Denan, which isan area just north of the Gode area.


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I would like to begin by thanking the government for being soproactive and responsive to this emergency. This assistance hasbeen provided by the U.S. Government, not only to the U.N. agen-cies such as the World Food Program, but has also been providedto nongovernmental organizations like Save the Children that areworking on the ground in Ethiopia. We have been really fortunateto have had a really close working relationship with USAID, Foodfor Peace, and OFDA. I think I can speak for all of the NGO’s, wewould not be in a position to respond to this crisis without thattimely support.

The U.S. Government should also be applauded for movingquickly and for providing a significant portion of the internationalassistance for this emergency. We are off to a good start, yet thereis still a lot to do. I would also like to recognize the U.S. Govern-ment’s understanding of the regional nature of this emergency andthe need to continue to support emergency development and polit-ical initiatives throughout the region. It is clear that this famine,like all famines, finds its roots in complex regional, political andeconomic issues that require a multifaceted and long-term ap-proach.

Save the Children began its work in Ethiopia in response to the1984 famine. Over the last 16 years, we have implemented a widerange of activities to help vulnerable children and their familiescombat hunger, obtain community-based health services, have ac-cess to clean water and attend school. Our programs focus on geo-graphic areas and target populations that have been under served.This includes the pastoral peoples in the east and south of Ethi-opia.

When droughts and famines begin, it is the children who are themost severely affected and whose health begins to deteriorate first.That is why in November 1999, Save the Children agreed with theEthiopian Government authorities to initiate drought relief activi-ties in the Gode zone of Ethiopia.

At this time the situation in Gode of Ethiopia is one of the mostsevere of anywhere in Ethiopia. An estimated child mortality rateof 1.5 of 10,000 per day has been observed. Currently, we are work-ing with 163 severely malnourished children who are at our thera-peutic feeding center and 6,000 moderately malnourished childrenwho are in our supplementary feeding program and are fed dailywith their mothers. Since the opening of these centers in February,admissions of malnourished children to these feeding centers aredouble our original projections.

The good news I can report is that during the past month, wehave seen a decrease in the number of infant and child deaths inGode. However, the death rates in the region are still too high. Weestimate that both feeding centers could double again and there isa clear need to open additional centers.

Other efforts that Save the Children is conducting in the region,including the preparation and initiation of food distributions forsome 135,000 children and family members in the Liben, Afdheer,and Borena regions were also involved in the transportation ofwater by trucks to over 100,000 residents of the Gode zone, how-ever, there are still villages that don’t have access to water. We arevaccinating livestock herds to prevent deaths and improve the food


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security of pastoralist families and their children who rely on live-stock for milk and income.

These efforts address only a small fraction of the suffering. Therelief efforts on the ground need to be expanded and combined withpolitical initiatives to fully address the problems that are currentlyaffecting over 8 million Ethiopians.

The efforts of Congress are needed to assist in this emergency.The American people don’t want us to let the women and childrenof Ethiopia die, regardless of the political turmoil of the govern-ments in the region. The United States is a leader in respondingto humanitarian crises, and the American people are known fortheir generosity and compassion. The faster we respond now, thegreater the chance that children and their families will survive.

What should Congress do? As stated previously, the U.S. Govern-ment’s initial efforts to deal with this emergency have been exem-plary. We are here today to ask Congress to continue to ensurethat the agencies of the U.S. Government have adequate resourcesto respond to the underlying economic and social fragility in the re-gion for years to come, recognize how important it is that the re-gional approach to this emergency is not forgotten, and that contin-ued assistance is targeted to the rehabilitation and developmentstage, not only in Ethiopia, but throughout the region, to help miti-gate the effects of potential future crises.

When I was in Ethiopia in September, I was in the Negali area,and I was out to see some of our programs that are supportedthrough the Food for Peace office. A number of the projects that weare involved with involve the construction of reservoirs. They areconstructed using food for work, but what they do is they enablethe people to conserve water for many additional months through-out the year. There were areas as large as two football fields thathad been dug 10 to 15 feet in the ground that were used as raincatchment areas. These are the types of interventions, relativelylow-cost interventions, that help people cope with the droughts inthose areas.

We should also acknowledge that the influence of the U.S. Con-gress is needed to ensure that the Government of Ethiopia main-tains its commitment to the long-term task of reducing famine vul-nerability.

Mr. TANCREDO. Please wrap it up.Mr. SHAYE. Just, finally, I get calls from our staff from places

like Afghanistan, Sudan and Angola. They are all places with com-plicated politics and conflict. The calls are about, what can agencieslike Save the Children do to address the humanitarian crisis?While we certainly understand that there is a conflict going on, itis really important for this Committee not to lose sight of thewoman sitting in Gode with her child. The conflict is a long wayfrom where she is, and she is looking to groups like Save the Chil-dren and others for the assistance she needs.

Thank you very much.[The prepared statement of Mr. Shaye appears in the appendix.]


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Mr. TANCREDO. Thank you, Mr. Shaye.Thank you, Dr. Morrison for your testimony. I appreciate it. I ap-

preciate the fact that you would stick around with us here. I assureyou that the testimony will be carefully reviewed.

We don’t have time for questions, so we will have to bring it toclosure. Thank you, gentlemen.

[Whereupon, at 1 p.m., the Committee was adjourned.]


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Documents

THE LOOMING FAMINE IN ETHIOPIA - GPO · PDF fileTHE LOOMING FAMINE IN ETHIOPIA HEARING BEFORE THE ... Reagan said a hungry child knows no politics. ... that we have the right kind